The Ukrainian government considers Russian cyberattacks on the country’s critical civilian infrastructure to be potential war crimes, cybersecurity officials said.
in an interview with Politico, Victor Zhora, Chief Digital Transformation Officer of Ukraine’s State Special Service for Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP), said government officials launched a kinetic strike to support possible prosecution before the International Criminal Court (ICC). said it was collecting evidence of cyberattacks carried out in parallel with ) in The Hague.
Since Russia began invading the region on February 24, 2022, it has carried out numerous cyberattacks against the Ukrainian government and critical services. Common tactics include DDoS attacks, disinformation campaigns, and large-scale wiper attacks.
During the conflict, we observed numerous attempts to destroy critical infrastructure, such as telecommunications services and energy suppliers, through cyberattacks. Ukraine has been widely praised for its cyber resilience in the face of this onslaught.
Some of the Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine have spilled over to other regions, most notably a DDoS attack against telecom company Viasat in February 2022.
in an interview with Politico, Zhora highlighted the coordination of Russian cyber and kinetic attacks on critical infrastructure in the conflict, including Ukraine’s largest private energy investor DTEK in July 2022. It was a directed and planned activity from the Russians, and they did it in both the conventional and cyber domains,” he said.
Zhora also highlighted “filtering procedures” by the Russian military to “identify, seize, torture and kill those who support Ukraine who have been in public service or military service”.
Academia and legal experts have recently debated whether cyberattacks, if used to harm civilians, can be included as part of a war crimes prosecution.
Cyber is increasingly seen as a military threat, and NATO has previously warned that cyberattacks would be treated like armed attacks against allies, and that it was prepared to take military action against the perpetrators. I was.
Zhora added: as a war crime. “
